Managing IT environments has become increasingly difficult, even in small business settings. With the addition of cloud infrastructure and subscription services, classic Small Business Server deployments have given way to hybrids that span on-premises and cloud environments. IT departments across industries and markets are looking for ways to manage these distributed environments as a whole.
Naturally, a long list of software companies wants to address the challenge for service providers and their customers. One such company, GroundWork Open Source, recently delivered GroundWork Monitor 7.2.1 -- the latest addition to its unified monitoring platform.
The update offers two new GroundWork Cloud Hub connectors: A Microsoft Azure connector for management and analysis of cloud infrastructure performance, and a NeDi connector for easier integration of network discovery and monitoring tools.
GroundWork 7.2.1 is a standalone, on-premise software package that is installed on organizations’ infrastructure to monitor everything connected to the IT environment, whether it’s physical, virtual, cloud or hybrid infrastructures. IT administrators can start with monitoring a specific application and expand across systems, including several open source tools that can be selected from the platform.
Unified Monitoring Platform Features
GroundWork's platform currently supports the following capabilities, the company says.
Cloud Hub - Continuous configuration and metric collection from virtual and cloud systems.
- Helps to identify bottlenecks between system and system managers.
Network Discovery - Identifies security vulnerabilities and controls network configuration.
- Enhances network inventory management which leads to lower maintenance costs.
SLA Management - Protects customer commitments that IT systems are performing optimally.
- Measures IT services against service agreements. Helps justify IT costs and budgets.
RESTful API - Enables maintenance integrations between management and monitoring.
- Can reduce IT staff time for system maintenance.
Custom Dashboards - Customized status views for executives, managers, DevOps, and NOC staff.
- Allows you to manage IT processes, people, and technology.
Event Console - Accurate and timely data for incidents and problem analysis.
- Can help prevent system outages and service failures.
According to the company, key enhancements to Groundwork Monitor 7.2.1 include:
- Azure connector to allow organizations to monitor and maintain cloud and hybrid-cloud systems in Microsoft’s™ Azure cloud.
- NeDi connector to easily integrate powerful network discovery tools supplied with GroundWork Monitor, and enhanced in this version.
- Updated InfluxDB to leverage time series data to identify performance trends. The update includes more data sources.
- Enhanced Grafana to quickly create and organize dashboards, graphically display metrics, show data points from multiple sources on a single graph, and compare metrics from different time periods.
Unified Monitoring Pricing Model
GroundWork Monitor’s pricing structure is based on the number of devices monitored, however, the company also offers GroundWork Monitor Core which allows up to 50 monitored devices, free of charge and without support. You can also request a demo of GroundWork Monitor for your organization at their website or by calling 1-866-899-4342.
Competition in this market is becoming fierce, as many key players look to solve this problem for IT departments and solution providers. Just within the last few months, we have reported on several new and expanded offerings from companies such as Blue Medora, Splunk and Datadog. It is clear the market continues to gain momentum, as each company tries to release the most helpful tool for IT managers.
MSP Model?
Our team has tracked Groundwork for roughly a decade. The company in 2010 launched an MSP-centric push focused on large service providers. Alas, URLs and background information about the MSP effort not longer appear on the Web.
Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.
